HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICE - Fichier PDF

500 ❚ Performance managementMost employees want direction, freedom to get their work done, and encouragementnot control. The performance management system should be a control system only byexception. The solution is to make it a collaborative development system, in two ways.First, the entire performance management process – coaching, counselling, feedback,tracking, recognition, and so forth – should encourage development. Ideally, teammembers grow and develop through these interactions. Second, when managers andteam members ask what they need to be able to do to do bigger and better things, theymove to strategic development.PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL AND PERFORMANCEMANAGEMENTIt is sometimes assumed that performance appraisal is the same thing as performancemanagement. But there are significant differences. Performance appraisal can bedefined as the formal assessment and rating of individuals by their managers at,usually, an annual review meeting. In contrast, performance management is a continuousand much wider, more comprehensive and more natural process of managementthat clarifies mutual expectations, emphasizes the support role of managerswho are expected to act as coaches rather than judges, and focuses on the future.Performance appraisal has been discredited because too often it has been operatedas a top-down and largely bureaucratic system owned by the HR department ratherthan by line managers. It has been perceived by many commentators such as Townley(1989) as solely a means of exercising managerial control. Performance appraisaltended to be backward looking, concentrating on what had gone wrong, rather thanlooking forward to future development needs. Performance appraisal schemesexisted in isolation. There was little or no link between them and the needs of thebusiness. Line managers have frequently rejected performance appraisal schemes asbeing time-consuming and irrelevant. Employees have resented the superficialnature with which appraisals have been conducted by managers who lack the skillsrequired, tend to be biased and are simply going through the motions. As Armstrongand Murlis (1998) assert, performance appraisal too often degenerated into ‘adishonest annual ritual’. The differences between them as summed up by Armstrongand Baron (2004) are set out in Table 32.1.VIEWS ON PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENTThe research conducted by the CIPD in 2003 (Armstrong and Baron, 2004) elicited thefollowing views from practitioners about performance management: